Often, during his impassioned preaching, Saint Augustine used a popular phrase of the day, ‘Christus medicus’, Christ the medical doctor or Christ the physician. It is interesting to see how Augustine presents Christ as the medical doctor.
One of Augustine’s favourite comments regarding faith is about “you’re willing to trust these doctors and you’re unwilling to trust God!” The latter is always to be trusted since he operates for our own good!
Speaking within the context of trusting God in the face of financial loss, the Doctor of Grace writes: “How much doctors do against the will of their patients, and yet they are not doing it against their health. The doctor sometimes makes a mistake, God never. So if you entrust yourself to a doctor who can make mistakes sometimes, you are entrusting yourself to human treatment − and not just for dressing which is soothing, or some bandaging which doesn’t hurt you, but very often it’s for him to burn, to cut, to remove a limb that was born with you and for you, that you entrust yourself to him. You don’t say, ‘What if he has it all wrong and I will be minus one finger!’ You allow him to cut, in case it should infect your whole body. And you won’t allow God to operate upon you, to amputate some of your wealth?”
The ‘dispensatio medicinalis’ or the ‘medicinal saving economy’, as explained in his ‘Commentary on John’s Gospel’ (36.4), is God’s healthcare programme for humanity in which Christ is certainly the doctor, medicine and health itself. Commenting on the first chapter of John’s Gospel, Augustine highlights Christ as the principal cause for our spiritual healing. “You who are sick take heart, look to your doctor, can you still be without hope? The afflictions were great, the wounds incurable, the illness fatal. You pay attention to the magnitude of the disease, aren’t you going to pay attention to the omnipotence of the doctor. You are desperate, but He is omnipotent.
The apostles are his witnesses; the first ones healed now proclaim this doctor. Yet even they were healed more in hope than in realization” (On 1 John 8.13).
If the Incarnation is God’s drastic medicinal intervention for humanity how much then can we deduce about the spiritual condition of every human patient! The novelty of Augustine’s contribution is that he regards Christ as, first and foremost, his personal doctor. At the beginning of Book Ten of the Confessions (10.3.4) Augustine speaks of God as his ‘medice meus intime’. Some English translations attempt to unravel its depths: ‘O my inmost Physician’ (Sheed), ‘my inward Healer’ (Boulding), ‘physician of my most inmost self’ (Chadwick).
Taken together these phrases powerfully portray Augustine’s greater concern for ‘salus animae’ – interior health, as he writes in Book One of his ‘Confessions’, “say to my soul, I am your health/salvation”.
Throughout the Confessions he both desires and longs for Christus medicus’ healing touch. “Woe is me, Lord have mercy upon me! Woe is me! See, I do not hide my wounds: you are the doctor, I am the patient, you are merciful, I am miserable.”
As a good patient, the Doctor of Grace does not conceal his spiritual illness. “See I do not hide my wounds” (Confessions 10. 28). This is not only the first and decisive step to recover one’s health but also to defeat one’s human sinful proud nature. The great insight that Augustine’s writings give us is that healing is always a question of truth and love. “Since the truth made you free, let love enslave you”
(Enarrationes in Psalmos 99.7). “Truth alone wins, and the victory of truth is love” (s. 358.1). Therefore, for Augustine the healing embrace of Christus medicus will always be truthful and loving!
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap